杂合启动子控制下乙肝病毒表面抗原SA—28融合基因在酵母中？…

在杂合启动子ＡＤＨ２－ＧＡＰＤＨ控制下于酿酒酵母中表达乙肝病毒表面抗原ＳＡ－２８融合基因的过程研究中,确定系统表达的有效阻遏条件为在１０．０ｇ／Ｌ的葡萄糖浓度下进行细胞的预培养,采用稀释操作和碳源饥饿培养等较彻底的支阻遏方式以克服葡萄糖酵解产物阻遏对表达的影响。实验还显示了溶解氧浓度对表达的影响和乙醇流加方式对表达期酵母生长与表达的调节作用。实验获得主培养４５ｈ后湿菌体浓度为１８６ｇ／Ｌ,细胞内ｐ     

创新霉素对其大肠杆菌抗性变株色氨酸合成途径酶合成的促进作用

测定创新霉素(CXM)及其类似物对大肠杆菌色氨酸操纵子表达的影响。结果发现,CXM和L-色氨酸(L-trp)对CXM敏感菌表现为阻遏作用,吲哚丙酸(IPA)则具有去阻遏作用;对CXM抗性变株,CXM与IPA均表现为去阻遏作用,L-trp不具阻遏作用,但可抵消CXM和IPA的去阻遏作用。提示阻遏蛋白和L-trp及其类以物至少有阻遏和去阻遏两个结合部位,CXM可以和这两个部位结合,在敏感菌中显示阻遏作用;在抗性变株中阻遏蛋白的阻遏部应结构改变,CXM显示去阻遏作用。     

Prevalence of AmpC over-expression in bloodstream isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa

This study examined the contribution of AmpC over-expression to beta-lactam resistance in clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa obtained from a hospital in Houston, TX, USA. Seventy-six non-repeat bloodstream isolates obtained during 2003 were screened for ceftazidime resistance in the presence and absence of clavulanic acid 4 mg/L. AmpC was identified by isoelectric focusing (with and without cloxacillin inhibition); stable derepression was ascertained phenotypically by a spectrophotometric assay (with and without preceding induction by imipenem) using nitrocefin as the substrate, and was confirmed subsequently by quantitative RT-PCR of the ampC gene. The clonal relatedness of the AmpC-over-expressing isolates was assessed by pulsed-field gel electrophoresis. In addition, the ampC and ampR gene sequences were determined by PCR and sequencing. For comparison, two standard wild-type strains (PAO1 and ATCC 27853) and three multidrug-susceptible isolates were used as controls. AmpC over-expression was confirmed in 14 ceftazidime-resistant isolates (overall prevalence rate, 18.4%), belonging to seven distinct clones. The most prevalent point mutations in ampC were G27D, V205L and G391A. Point mutations in ampR were also detected in eight ceftazidime-resistant isolates. AmpC over-expression appears to be a significant mechanism of beta-lactam resistance in P. aeruginosa. Understanding the prevalence and mechanisms of beta-lactam resistance in P. aeruginosa may guide the choice of empirical therapy for nosocomial infections in hospitals.     

Molecular switch architecture determines response properties of signaling pathways

Many intracellular signaling pathways are composed of molecular switches, proteins that transition between two states—on and off. Typically, signaling is initiated when an external stimulus activates its cognate receptor that, in turn, causes downstream switches to transition from off to on using one of the following mechanisms: activation, in which the transition rate from the off state to the on state increases; derepression, in which the transition rate from the on state to the off state decreases; and concerted, in which activation and derepression operate simultaneously. We use mathematical modeling to compare these signaling mechanisms in terms of their dose–response curves, response times, and abilities to process upstream fluctuations. Our analysis elucidates several operating principles for molecular switches. First, activation increases the sensitivity of the pathway, whereas derepression decreases sensitivity. Second, activation generates response times that decrease with signal strength, whereas derepression causes response times to increase with signal strength. These opposing features allow the concerted mechanism to not only show dose–response alignment, but also to decouple the response time from stimulus strength. However, these potentially beneficial properties come at the expense of increased susceptibility to upstream fluctuations. We demonstrate that these operating principles also hold when the models are extended to include additional features, such as receptor removal, kinetic proofreading, and cascades of switches. In total, we show how the architecture of molecular switches govern their response properties. We also discuss the biological implications of our findings.

Several molecules involved in intracellular signaling pathways act as molecular switches. These are proteins that can be temporarily modified to transition between two conformations, one corresponding to an on (active) state and another to an off (inactive) state. Two prominent examples of such switches are proteins that are modified by phosphorylation and dephosphorylation and GTPases that bind nucleotides. For phosphorylation–dephosphorylation cycles, it is common for the covalent addition of a phosphate by a kinase to cause activation of the modified protein. A phosphatase removes the phosphate to turn the protein off. In the GTPase cycle, the protein is on when bound to guanosine triphosphate (GTP) and off when bound to guanosine diphosphate (GDP). The transition from the GDP-bound state to the GTP-bound state requires nucleotide exchange, whereas the transition from the GTP-bound to the GDP-bound state is achieved via hydrolysis of the γ phosphate on GTP. The basal rates of nucleotide exchange and hydrolysis are often small. These reaction rates are increased severalfold by Guanine Exchange Factors (GEFs) and GTPase Accelerating Proteins (GAPs), respectively (1, 2).A signaling pathway is often initiated upon recognition of a stimulus by its cognate receptor, which then activates a downstream switch. In principle, a switch may be turned on by three mechanisms: (a) activation, by increasing the transition rate from the off state to the on state; (b) derepression, by decreasing the transition rate from the on state to the off state; and (c) concerted activation and derepression. Examples of these three mechanisms are found in the GTPase cycles in different organisms. In animals, signaling through many pathways is initiated by G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) that respond to a diverse set of external stimuli. These receptors act as GEFs to activate heterotrimeric G proteins (3–6). Thus, pathway activation relies upon increasing the transition rate from the off state to the on state. There are no GPCRs in plants and other bikonts; the nucleotide exchange occurs spontaneously, without requiring GEF activity (7–9). G proteins are kept in the off state by a repressor such as a GAP or some other protein that holds the self-activating G protein in its inactive state. In this scenario, the presence of a stimulus results in derepression, i.e., removal of the repressing activity (10–12). Concerted activation and dererpression occur in the GTPase cycle of the yeast mating-response pathway (13, 14), in which the inactive GPCRs recruit a GAP protein and act to repress, whereas active receptors have GEF activity and act to activate. Thus, perception of a stimulus leads to concerted activation and derepression by increasing GEF activity while decreasing GAP activity.These three mechanisms of signaling through molecular switches also occur in many other systems. For example, the activation mechanism described here is a simpler abstraction of a linear signaling cascade, a classical framework used to study general properties of signaling pathways (15–19), as well as to model specific signaling pathways (20–22). While derepression may seem like an unusual mechanism, it occurs in numerous important signaling pathways in plants (e.g., auxin, ethylene, gibberellin, and phytochrome), as well as gene regulation (23–27). In many of these cases, derepression occurs through a decrease in the degradation rate of a component instead of its deactivation rate. Concerted mechanisms are found in bacterial two-component systems, wherein the same component acts as kinase and phosphatase (28–35).Many previous studies have focused on the properties of a single switch mechanism without drawing comparisons between the three potential ways for initiating signaling. For example, the classical Goldbeter–Koshland model studied zero-order ultrasensitivity of an activation mechanism (15). Further analyses examined the effect of receptor numbers (36–38), feedback mechanisms (39, 40), and removal of active receptors via endocytosis and degradation (41, 42). Similarly, important properties of the concerted mechanism have been elucidated, such as its ability to perform ratiometric signaling (13, 14), to align dose responses at different stages of the signaling pathway (43), as well as its robustness (29, 44). The derepression mechanism is relatively less studied. Although there are models of G-signaling in Arabidopsis thaliana (45–47), these models have a large number of states and parameters and do not specifically examine distinct behaviors conferred by derepression.What are the evolutionary constraints that may favor activation over derepression and vice versa? Seminal studies have investigated this question for gene-regulatory networks (48–50). However, an analysis of differences in the functional characteristics of activation, derepression, and concerted mechanisms in the context of cell signaling is still lacking. To address this deficiency, we perform a systematic comparison of the three mechanisms using the following metrics: 1) dose–response, 2) response time, and 3) ability to suppress or filter stochastic fluctuations in upstream components. The rationale behind comparing dose–response curves is that they provide information about the input sensitivity range and the output dynamic range, both of which are of pharmacological importance. We supplement this comparison with response times, which provide information about the dynamics of the signaling activity. The third metric of comparison is motivated from the fact that signaling pathways are subject to intrinsic fluctuations that occur due to the stochastic nature of biochemical reactions (51–56).We construct and analyze both deterministic ordinary differential equation (ODE) models and stochastic models based on continuous-time Markov chains. We show that activation has the following two effects: It makes the switch response more sensitive than that of the receptor, and it speeds up the response with the stimulus strength. In contrast, derepression makes the switch response less sensitive than the receptor occupancy and slows down the response speed as stimulus strength increases. These counteracting behaviors of activation and derepression lead to intermediate sensitivity and intermediate response time for the concerted mechanism. In the special case of a perfect concerted mechanism (equal activation and repression), the dose–response curve of the pathway aligns with the receptor occupancy, and the response time does not depend upon the stimulus level. The noise comparison reveals that the concerted mechanism is more susceptible to fluctuations than the activation and derepression mechanisms, which perform similarly. We further show that these results qualitatively hold for more complex models, such as those incorporating receptor removal and proofreading. We finally discuss our findings to suggest reasons that might have led biological systems to evolve one of these mechanisms over the others, a question that has received considerable attention in the context of gene regulation (48–50).     

Use of biotinylated plasmid DNA as a surrogate for HSV DNA to identify proteins that repress or activate viral gene expression

Significance

DNA introduced into cells by infection or transfection is immediately coated by repressive histones and repressors. Viruses have evolved mechanisms to derepress their genes. What we know of these events is based on ChIP analyses that help identify the proteins involved in these processes, provided their identity is suspected and reagents are available. We report a procedure that enables identification of proteins hitherto not linked to these processes, based on the observation that HSV derepresses both viral DNA and DNAs introduced concurrently by transfection by using the transfected DNA as the surrogate for viral DNA.     

Functional analysis of upstream activating elements in the promoter of the FBP1 gene from Saccharomyces cerevisiae

We have investigated the effect of different carbon sources and of different mutations on the capacity of two elements, UAS1 and UAS2, from the promoter of the FBP1 gene to form specific DNA-protein complexes and to activate expression of a reporter gene. The complexes are observed with nuclear extracts from yeast derepressed on glycerol or ethanol. When hxk2 mutants are grown on glucose the nuclear extracts are able to complex UAS1 but not UAS2, while for wild-type cells grown on galactose only the complex with UAS2 is formed. In contrast, in vivo the operation of both UASs is high in ethanol, moderate to low in glycerol, and negligible in galactose; no expression is observed in glucose even in a hxk2 background. There is no effect of a MIG1 deletion, either in the formation of DNA-protein complexes or on the expression of reporter genes. Received: 29 December 1997 / 23 April 1998     

Extracellular protease expression in Microsporum gypseum complex, its regulation and keratinolytic potential

Two soil isolates of Microsporum gypseum were studied for the production of extracellular proteases. Both the strains secreted protease on glucose-gelatin medium. The enzyme activity peaked on day 15 at 28 °C. Asparagine repressed protease yield. Sugars caused catabolite repression of protease formation. Protease activities of both the isolates were significantly affected by incubation period, culture media and carbohydrates used. Both the strains grew on the skin bait and caused a gravimetrically measurable loss of the substrate. Despite less pronounced differences in the keratinase levels, great variations occurred in the amount of keratin degraded by two isolates. Keratinase production as well as loss in substrate mass was better in glucose-lacking flasks than those containing the sugar. Although the rate of keratin degradation was independent of enzyme production, statistically positive correlations were recorded between loss in substrate mass: yielded dry mycelial weight and substrate degradation: keratinase levels.     

Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains sensitive to inorganic mercury

Summary In Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the HGS2-1 allele confers sensitivities to inorganis mercury (Ono and Sakamoto 1985) and to excess fermentable sugars such as glucose (Sakamoto et al. 1985); exogenous tyrosine antagonizes both inorganic mercury and excess glucose. In this sutdy, the inorganic mercury sensitive strain has been shown to have about twice more glucose-1,6-bisphosphate and slightly less pyruvate than the normal strains, suggesting that the inorganic mercury sensitive strain has the reduced aldolase activity. It has been also shown that the growth retarded cells accumulate trehalose, by which the lower level of glucos-6-phosphate in the inorganic mercury sensitive strain is accounted for, and that inorganic mercury, presumably excess glucose also, causes growth inhibition via depletion of cellular tyrosine. The mechanism how cellular tyrosine is depleted by inorganic mercury or excess glucose is accounted for by the facts that (1) the tyrosine uptake activity is decreased with increase of glucose concentration in growth medium, (2) HGS2-1 enhances the effect of glucose on the tyrosine uptake activity, and (3) inorganic mercury inhibits the tyrosine uptake system by binding to its SH-group(s). Thus, it is concluded that the role of tyrosine is not to detoxify inorganic mercury nor excess fermentable sugars but simply to counteract depletion of cellular tyrosine induced by them.